I just stood in line for an hour and half to place my one little vote. I have never stood in line at my polling place to cast my vote. Well - maybe 5 to 10 people in a line but never what I saw today. And I always vote!
Do you know what I saw?
Everyone is placing their one little votes. We the people are speaking.
Imagine that.... We do love our country - my neighbors are getting involved in OUR country....We The People.
The heart of the race in 2000 happened here in good old Florida. It's when we as a country lost our heart. It's when I got involved in my country instead of just complaining about it.
What makes this year different than the past? Follow me and I'll tell you.
4 years ago I was a poll watcher. I saw what happened in my city of Hollywood Florida. I was involved in the election. I attended all the events. One thing I noticed it was the same few tired people that would show up to everything - doing all the work. I sat in front of my voting site all day 4 years ago and all the hours of watching people come and go we never had more than a few in the line.
Today is different. There was/is an hour or more wait for my one site alone. I stood in line watching people come and go. I felt the excitement, the energy of the people who were there no matter what to VOTE.
In the primaries we only had 11% show up to vote. I was number 56 at 2:30pm voting at my polling place that day. Today at 12:15pm I was number 227.
We have over 100,000 new voters since last year. I know because I've been watching the Supervisors website
Registered Voters as of 11/04/2008
Democrat: 541,834 Republican: 245,514 Other: 234,888 Total: 1,022,236
I didn't early vote because I didn't have the 3-4 hours to stand in line so I decides to take 65% of registered voters (which would really be a high number since we usually only get 25-30% show up) minus the 25% early voters (actually was over 30%). We had 72 polling places open up in my city today. Our polls are open for 12 hours so I figured we would have 25-30 people per hour show up at each site.
I'm telling you - it's a lot more showing up than I figured. If your city is doing what my city is doing than we do have a country by the people.
More than anything I'm so excited people are using their freedom that Alex died for....their gift to all of our children who have died in Iraq.
This is a very special day - a special year for all of us...
Alex and all his friends would be so proud of all of us...
For the first time in my adult life I am proud of us...
If anything lets celebrate that "we the people" are voting today in MASSIVE numbers in South Florida and I can only assume everywhere.
And if the rest of the country looks like my polling place.....
We have ridden the roller coaster ride - we have hit the bottom and we are going up the other side. You know the part that takes the hard work to get to the very top but when you get to the to the other side is the best part of the ride.
ONE MORE THING... If you voted in Broward County go to Ale House show them your "My vote counted" sticker and get a free beer!
LETS PARTY!!!